Henry Becton, retired WGBH president, still fights for PBS

Wednesday

Nov 28, 2007 at 12:01 AMNov 28, 2007 at 2:05 PM

Henry Becton recently stepped down as president of WGBH, ending a remarkable 23-year tenure in that post, during which he guided the venerable public broadcasting station through decades of astounding growth as well as incidents of controversy.

Ed Symkus

Henry Becton recently stepped down as president of WGBH, ending a remarkable 23-year tenure in that post, during which he guided the venerable public broadcasting station through decades of astounding growth as well as incidents of controversy.

Becton helped create many of PBS’ signature shows, including “This Old House,” “Antiques Roadshow,” “Frontline” and “Arthur.” And he was thrown into the center of the storm when he defended the documentary “Death of a Princess” — about a Saudi princess who was executed for adultery — when it was challenged by the Saudi government and PBS sponsor Mobil Oil. And when U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings condemned an episode of “Postcards from Buster” — because of an appearance by a lesbian couple — and PBS ordered it pulled from the schedule, Becton defied the order, airing it locally and making it available to other stations.

Things may be a bit calmer now, but Becton’s not done. He’s just working “reduced hours,” adopting the titles of vice chairman of the board and part-time advisor.

“The theory is that I’m working half time, close to three days a week,” says Becton, 64, with a knowing smile, from his neatly cluttered office at WGBH’s new Brighton location.

He’ll still represent WGBH on the Public Radio International Board, the PBS Foundation Board and the board of the TV series “POV.” He’s also vice chairman of the Association of Public Television Stations.

“I will continue to do some fundraising,” he says. “And I would like to continue to help put together the resources and elements for working on major program editorial initiatives.”

He pauses, smiles again and adds, “So it’s more than three days a week.”

Becton, a Concord resident, went to Harvard Law School, ended up teaching science and math at the Cambridge School in Weston — where his wife, Jeannie, whom he met while in law school, was teaching silversmithing — but decided that he wanted to try filmmaking, having caught the bug while taking an animation class with Derek Lamb at Harvard.

“So I applied for a job at WGBH,” he recalls, “and got one as a producer-trainee [in 1970]. My first assignment was to work on the studio crew — the technicians group —for three months. That’s where I learned how the studio worked.”

Then he began a climb up the WGBH ladder, as a production assistant, then a producer — he created the first public access series, “Catch 44,” as well as “2’s Company,” a series that featured former “Today Show” host Dave Garroway. Soon after, he became an executive producer, then general manager, then president.

Becton claims that his career trajectory was typical of the station at the time.

“There was one point back then at which the average age for the top management at WGBH was under 30,” he says. “Today reminds me somewhat of that, not in that regard, but because of what’s going on in broadband and the Internet. Today is more like the early ’70s in my mind than any other time period between. There are all these amazing new ways of reaching audiences, and the economics of the Web make it fairly inexpensive to try things and see what works.”

Part of the station’s strategy to grab a piece of the ever-fragmenting viewing audience is to make shows available in a variety of formats.

“We sort of re-aggregate the same size audience but over many other different platforms,” explains Becton. “For instance, when ‘Frontline’ does a program, we’ve got the broadcast audience and we’ve got the online broadband audience, and ‘Frontline’ will be on Video on Demand on local cable systems.”

Another part of the strategy involves WGBH’s practice of broadcasting several major exhibition events each season. The most recent example was Ken Burns’ “The War.” The next one, scheduled to begin on Jan. 13 on “Masterpiece Theatre,” is a film series titled “The Complete Jane Austen.”

Becton remains fascinated with the use of new technologies. He’s one of many broadcast people hoping that a project known as the American Archive will someday get off the ground. He becomes quite animated when the subject is brought up.

“It aspires to be a collection of educational programs and materials drawn from public television and radio programming over the years,” he says. “We’ve got this treasure trove of stuff, but most of it hasn’t been digitized, so there’s no way of really making it widely available. The notion of it is that we would digitize, index, meta-tag and make available all these great educational programs. There would also be an education wing of the archive that will be smaller segments keyed to curriculum standards in the different states, so that teachers can use it.”

Once Becton gets onto this subject, it’s hard for him to stop. He’s quite proud of what’s in the WGBH vault.

“We have quite a major collection of important stuff here,” he says, beaming. “Eleanor Roosevelt hosting a program where John Kennedy announces he’s running for president, or the James Brown concert in Boston Garden the night after Martin Luther King was assassinated, or all of ‘The Advocates’ with Michael Dukakis moderating, or the whole history of school bussing in Boston on our newscasts. These could all be made available.

“Of course, it takes money, “he adds. “Congress did fund the hardware costs of converting to digital broadcast for several years. Now we’re asking them, in effect, to keep that going for another few years so that we can get the content converted. It’s a big idea and it’s got a lot of support in Congress.”

When Becton isn’t happily overwhelmed by television and radio responsibilities, he manages to get to a varied collection of hobbies. He calls his family his biggest interest, referring directly to the recent arrival of his granddaughter Campbell.

Among others: “I do some choral singing, I like to do some sailing when I can, I like to travel, I like to read — I’m currently reading ‘The Trick of It’ by Michael Frayn — andI watch TV, especially the Red Sox.

“I also love movies, and I’d like to go to more of them,” he adds. “One of my early visions was to be a filmmaker, but I discovered that I was as interested in education as I was in filmmaking. I think I’ve been very lucky to find a career that combined both.”

For more information about WGBH, visit www.wgbh.org.

Ed Symkus can be reached at esymkus@cnc.com.

Show me the money

The fact that PBS draws public money is a source of constant debate. In the interest of promoting informed debate, here’s a breakdown of WGBH’s budget.

During FY06, WGBH’s New England TV and Radio stations received 48 percent of their support from its audience. Other major sources of support included federal funds (18 percent), royalties (16 percent), local business sponsors (8 percent), investment income (4 percent) and other/miscellaneous (6 percent).

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